An American think-tank wants to reopen its case to get Prince Harry’s secret US visa application made public after he admitted taking drugs in his memoir.
The Heritage Foundation questioned why the Duke of Sussex was allowed into the US with his wife Meghan in 2020 following his reference to taking cocaine, marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms in his book Spare which came out in January 2023.
The conservative Washington DC group brought a lawsuit against the Department for Homeland Security (DHS) after a Freedom of Information request was rejected.
Heritage claimed Harry’s document was of ‘immense public interest’ but lost the case on September 23 after judge Carl Nichols ruled it should remain private.
The case was brought because visa applicants must by law declare whether they have taken drugs. Failure to do so can lead to deportation, and Heritage wanted the US Government to release the records to see what Harry said about drug usage.
Now, Heritage has submitted a new court filing as it tries to reopen the case as it was not allowed to see private submissions to the judge by the Biden administration.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle outside St Paul’s Cathedral in London on June 3, 2022
The 13-page motion lodged on Tuesday attempts to ‘vacate’ the previous ruling and unseal private correspondence between DHS and the judge, reported Newsweek.
The judge’s order was redacted to protect the Duke’s privacy, but Heritage claimed this ‘severely compromises’ its ability to ‘prepare arguments on appeal’.
Parts of the judgment that were redacted included facts Harry has not disclosed publicly in relation to his immigration status and records, and what was contained in his visa application.
But Heritage lawyers said there was ‘ample evidence of agency bad faith’, saying their legal team was ‘not blind to the fact that they have brought a unique case that is fraught with these complexities’.
They added that the Heritage lawyers ‘simply submit that the way forward taken by the court does not comport with our adversarial system’.
US Judge Carl Nichols made a ruling on September 23 against the Heritage Foundation
In the ruling on September 23, Judge Nichols said ‘the public does not have a strong interest in disclosure of the Duke’s immigration records’.
Harry talked about using drugs in his memoir Spare which was released in January 2023
His judgment added: ‘Like any foreign national, the duke has a legitimate privacy interest in his immigration status.
‘And the Duke’s public statements about his travel and drug use did not disclose, and therefore did not eliminate his interest in keeping private, specific information regarding his immigration status, applications, or other materials.’
Judge Nichols went on to say the public’s interest in disclosure of Harry’s immigration records is ‘outweighed by the Duke’s privacy interest’.
He said: ‘Public disclosure of records about a single admission of a foreign national in the circumstances described above would provide the public, at best, limited information about the department’s general policy in admitting aliens.
‘And the marginal public benefit of knowing that limited information is outweighed by the privacy interest the duke retains in his immigration status and records.’
In March, Department for Homeland Security lawyers asked for more time to comply with a judge’s ordered to provide more information about why it did not want to release the records
In his controversial memoir, the duke said cocaine ‘didn’t do anything for me’, adding: ‘Marijuana is different, that actually really did help me.’
Judge Carl Nichols said ‘the public does not have a strong interest in disclosure of the Duke’s immigration records’
Heritage’s original lawsuit argued that US law ‘generally renders such a person inadmissible for entry’ to the country.
The group also said answers on the duke’s prior drug use in his visa application should have been disclosed as they could raise questions over the US government’s integrity.
In the DHS response to the legal claim, it said: ‘Much like health, financial, or employment information, a person’s immigration information is private personal information.’
The submissions made by lawyer John Bardo on behalf of DHS also said no ‘publicly available information, shows that Prince Harry was ever convicted for a drug-related offence’.
Mr Bardo added that any suggestion from Heritage of wrongdoing on behalf of the US government was ‘purely speculative’.
In March, former president Donald Trump suggested that Harry could be deported if his drug use was not declared on the application.
The immigration file of Melania Trump’s Slovenian mother Amalija Knavs was released by think tank The Heritage Foundation amid its battle with the US Department of Homeland Security
He told GB News: ‘We’ll have to see if they know something about the drugs, and if he lied they’ll have to take appropriate action.’
Asked whether that meant the Duke ‘not staying in America,’ he said: ‘Oh I don’t know. You’ll have to tell me. You just have to tell me. You would have thought they would have known this a long time ago.’
Separately, the Heritage Foundation has released Melania Trump’s mother’s immigration records after a successful Freedom of Information request to the DHS.
The 166 pages of documents related to Amalija Knavs, who was sworn in as a US citizen in 2018 but died in Miami in January aged 78.
A family lawyer told DailyMail.com that Mrs Trump was ‘rightfully upset’ about the release and ‘will be looking to explore retaliatory options to protect her family’.
Ms Knavs’s documents include highly personal information such as her home address in her native Slovenia and multiple passports in full.
They also contain immunisation and medical information revealing a negative HIV test result and her vaccination records for chickenpox and other diseases.
Heritage has cited the release of Ms Knavs’s file as further grounds for making Harry’s public. MailOnline has contacted the Duke’s spokesman for comment.
